“Do you see that tumbleweed going across the road?” Conchita asked my 4 year-old daughter Sofia.
“Yes, I just saw it,” she responded, looking out the car window while a ball of dry branches rolled across the Puerto Peñasco-Sonoyta highway just a few miles after we had left town.
“Pay careful attention,” Conchita instructed Sophia through the rear-view mirror, “I’m going to tell you a beautiful story about that tumbleweed…as it were, once there was a handsome Russian prince who came to Mexico and met a beautiful Mayan princess. They fell in love and swore to love each other forever, but her parents wouldn’t allow them to be together and took the princess far from the village so the Prince could never find her. The story says that since then the Prince has continued to look for her, and to do so turned into one of those tumbleweeds you see rolling along the highway, and he won’t give up until he finds his beautiful princess so they can be together happily forever.
“So,” inquired Sofia, opening her eyes wide in amazement, “that tumbleweed was the prince?”
“It might’ve been the prince.”
“Looking for the princess?”
“Yes, possibly looking for the princess.”
“Poor prince.”
Since then, every time my daughters and I travel to Sonoyta, whether by car or shuttle, just as we leave town Sofia looks out the window to see if she can spot any tumbleweeds, rolling about in search of a princess.